Do you ever feel a wave of despair that your job is just never ending?

[whereisthestamina]

I'm not sure exactly how to express this, exactly. I'm talking mostly from the perspective of jobs like PR or marketing with ongoing never ending tasks that are never fully completed, with a line drawn under them. Sorry this probably makes no sense - I mean, yes, individual projects of course do wrap up but there is a wider sense of endlessness that I'm sure exists in plenty of jobs.

I am in poor health and suspect my lack of energy contributes to this feeling. But does anyone else ever get a sense of this never ending cycle of tasks and feel very stressed out by it?

Contract management is this!! Even when a contract ends you get the fun and games of simultaneously exiting one and mobilising another. Never cocking ending!

Not really. It's admin so it will exist as long as our organisation does. Lots of soft skills and human interaction needed too so hopefully we're safe from AI.

I am joining in with others from education/teaching. Endless marking (and endless extensions), endless correspondence, endless preparation, endless moderation and endless other tasks, observations and so on.

I used to think this would end when I 'retired' but I am not sure I ever will retire now

Yes, teacher but recently moved into a full time SENCO role.
My "To do" list never shrinks, only grows.
At the start it was making me incredibly anxious but what helped was recognising that this happens to everybody and sometimes you just have to prioritise and accept that you're not super-human.

I don't mind small projects that end and are done. What I don't like is when I think something has finished, and then someone comes back about three months later with another query on it. And then another.

This time of year is very busy for me but it will quieten down in January and then gradually build up to Easter and further false deadlines.

Yep. Totally get it.

I'm.a teacher. My job is never done. It's like a pay day loan - it doesn't matter how much I try and get that to do list down, I'll look at it the next day and it's even longer than the day before!

(And everyone hates me 😉)

Ohhh I feel you op - I’m the sole
comms/pr person in a small local ngo environmental org, with a team of around 16.

Since I joined 6 years ago the team has doubled in size as has our work programme, but no more investment in comms. We have loads
of different stakeholders and about 7 different ongoing big projects, all of which need comms. I’m responsible for social, brand, design (thanks canva), standard PR, public engagement, redeveloping our website, events, 2 x months enews updates, and a thousand other things. All on 3 days a week as there isn’t funding for full time.

The sector we work in is constantly changing and I get daily emails from the team sharing news articles and asking ‘can we put something on Facebook about this?’ 🙄

It’s just me so no one there to pick up slack if I’m off. I envy people who have a fresh start every day but I’m sure those jobs come with their own problems.

Acute Nursing is like that - it's never ending. And we don't even have an end of the year like a lot of jobs - the patients just keep coming in , in an endless stream. We rarely see them get better or go home - we just keep looking after people whose names we can't remember , and whose future is unknown to us.

Like marking...
Definitely like housework too!

Yes!